


Somehow You'll Find You Are There

by Lothiriel84



Series: Who Will Find Me [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Families of Choice, Gen, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: I need something to fly over my grave againI need something to breathe(R.E.M.,Try Not To Breathe)





	

Deep waters. All his life, that much is true – and yet he believes he’s finally figured out how to sail across them without sinking.

(They do come back to haunt him in his dreams on occasion; but more often than not it’s about thick walls closing in on him now, and his brother grimly smiling at him from the wrong end of a gun.)

The child has grown, somehow – though he’s only too aware of how utterly ludicrous Mummy’s remark about him ‘always being the grown up’ was. Guilt, unfamiliar but not entirely uncalled-for, is now blossoming into something else entirely; a peculiar form of fond understanding that he doesn’t dare to call brotherly affection yet.

It’s always been Mycroft, ever since he can remember. Always his outstretched hand, reaching out to help him pick himself up off the literal or metaphorical floor. It will take some time for him to make sense of his long-buried childhood memories, but there’s one fixed point in the ever changing picture, and that’s how far his big brother was willing to go in order to protect him from pain and loss.

For all the times Mycroft has claimed that caring is not an advantage, that’s exactly what he’s been doing all these years; he now reckons his brother has had more than his fair share of heartbreak over that, and he still has trouble reconciling himself with such notion.

Friends or family, that’s what Eurus wanted him to choose between. Only it’s not about that, never has been; it’s about the family you choose, and that chooses you back in return.

He knows that much now, and is finally prepared to acknowledge how many people found their place in his life, without him even realising at first. He has a godchild now, and a friend that somehow along the way turned into family; then there are all the people he never dared to call friends, who now come in and out of Baker Street as if they always belonged there.

Sherrinford has been torture, but in many ways it has changed him for the better; and while he knows his sister will never be saved, it’s of some consolation to know that she’s not lost anymore. Mummy and Father will never fully understand what Mycroft has been through in order to protect the world from Eurus, just as well as Eurus from herself; but in the end it hardly matters when it’s painfully clear how they never did understand their eldest son at all.

He thinks he does now, just a tiny bit, and he finds that his brother is secretly grateful for that.


End file.
